Part II begins the narrative that fills most of this book. Its central theme is the problem of the reform of the Empire and the Church during the decades between 1400 and 1520. The chapters play out two great stories. The first story consists of the actual reforms in governance, successful in the Empire but not in the Church. The reforms emerged not under the inspiration of ideas, such as the Church being a model for the Empire, but as a series of concrete changes inspired by political and military needs. The possibility of change depended on the king-emperor and his leading vassals coming willy-nilly to terms as co-regents of the Empire. One great change made political reforms: the institutionalization of dynastic power over specific, feudal but heritable lands, or, in a word, territorialization. Unlike their Luxemburg predecessors, the two Habsburg king-emperors of this era managed to consolidate their rule over a cluster of dynastic territories. The Austrian lands served them as a base for advancing dynastic interests in the Empire as a whole.